Tips for Tokyo Summer Travelers

Summers in Tokyo are hot and steamy, and in 2020 a lot of travelers will be heading to Tokyo for the summer Olympic games. As hindsight is 20/20, I'm noting what I learned from my travels and sharing these summer travels tips for Toyko:

1. Travel light
Portable, light suitcases that can easily navigate the tight spaces of trains, smaller hotel rooms, and crowded public spaces are essential. Fewer belongings are better than wrestling with too many bags! A reasonably small roller suitcase and a backpack or bag work well- especially one that slips over the suitcase handle which also reduces back strain. I made my kids use carryon suitcases for their stuff and had them put their electronics, book, sweater, and snacks in a backpack for easy access. I had a larger suitcase with half of it stuffed with OU t-shirts (see #7 below).

2. Pack quick drying clothes
Laundry in Japan is generally dried on the clothesline or rack. Public laundries do have dryers, but if you only have access to a hotel or apartment amenities, laundering items in the sink will require you to hang them up to dry. Quick drying clothes (polyester fibers, nylon, etc.) ensure your clothes are dry and ready. This particularly is relevant to your underwear but also applies to most things of thick cotton which can take a long while to dry. Pack well by bringing less- follow the 5 4 3 2 1 rule, choose coordinating colors (pick one scheme), and roll your stuff up.

3. Carry a hand towel
Public restrooms rarely provide paper towels or air dryers in Japan. The Japanese carry small hand towels for drying their hands in the bathroom. Purchase a small (wash cloth sized) hand towel- easily found in a variety of stores- look for absorbing fibers and darker colors.

4. Skip the water bottle
Japan has vending machines on top of mountains. My point here is that vending machines are every where in Japan. It's hot in Tokyo, and you'll want that drink cold. Skip the reusable bottle, and plan to purchase beverages as needed. I recently observed a Tokyo business man in his suit pull out and chug a liter bottle of o-cha at a cross walk- convenience stores sell single servings as well as half and full liter bottles. Restaurants do not generally provide refills in Japan, and in Japan, a small beverage is smaller than in America. Hydration might cost you a bit more in Japan, but you will need your fluids, and you'll appreciate them cold.

5. Pack out your garbage
Garbage can be complicated in Japan. At it's simplest you can find containers for "burnable" and "recyclable." However, you often have to pack out your garbage which means it is something to be mindful of that when you create trash, you'll need to think about when and where you can dispose of it. Sometimes this means carrying it for a bit. For example, some vending machines have a recycling collection for the bottles, but not always. Don't expect to readily find trash cans for your food wastes or hand wipes.

6. Hygiene products
I struggle the most with choosing which hygiene products. I've got curly hair so in humid weather the kind of hair products I use changes the way my hair behaves. In Japan, I opt for only taking hair gel as I can generally rely on the hair products in the hotels and onsens to be reasonably good, at most I would add conditioner. I also bring sunblock for my face, face lotion, deodorant, and contact cleaner. Everything else I can skip or buy there. Most of my Japanese friends buy toothbrushes at the convenience stores. You can even buy underwear at a convenience store in Japan- but you need to be a fairly small American (I wear a small in America but a large in Japan).

7. Gifts
Japan is a gifting culture that is alien to me- people give gifts when they go to your house, when you come to theirs, and so many other occasions that I don't understand. I often find myself in the awkward position of receiving a gift without one to give. Luckily,  much of the gift giving is food based; it's easy to use it up (this is my minimalism coming out). Bring something from your hometown to share- whether a special spice, t-shirt, a jar of jam- then take it with you if someone invites you over.

8. Get a rail pass card
It's safe and easy to get around Japan whether on the train, subway, or bus. The subways, trains, and buses are easiest with a rail pass. My husband thoughtfully brought our Suica cards from five years before. These electronic cards make daily travels (and using those vending machines for cold drinks) infinitely easier and more efficient since you won't have to fish for coins or make your jet-lagged fogged brain count- add yen to your card and the fare is deducted electronically. Different rail (and bus) lines such as East Japan Railway Co. versus private, etc. may use other cards like the Pasmo. In an around Tokyo, either work for most of your transportation needs. The station agents can help you navigate platforms, train lines, and generally assist you with directions, but there's also an app.

Vending machines in Japan

Branding and Growing

The Sun Rises at East. 

Warm Fuzzy, Best, West.

The elementary school slogans of yore, reflecting the unique personalities of the schools, have fallen out of favor for the more generic term, the Athens Bulldogs, which once was just the high school mascot. For me, the unifying rally that we are all bulldogs reflects a focus on sports and competition that is not inline with elementary school challenges or life.

Once a bulldog, always a bulldog, is a set path that means we miss the chance to be the beginners or relish the warm fuzzies. Branding early limits the potential meaning we could find for ourselves. We give kids a packaged deal laced with a mascot that reflects one value.

Bonding around a sports team is generally overrated in my book. From high school to college to pro teams that represent American cities, we are so much more than a few special athletes and our obsession with sports.

Where is the love of the brilliant, the human interest, the artist, or the different? It's the difference between TV and public radio where instead of a narrow foot trail, the potential to shine is a wide swath.

We need open space and inviting words to grow and discover for ourselves.

Observing New York

During my few days in New York, I've noticed a few things.

-People are nice, even helpful. The hotel desk clerk warned us that our minibar is possessed, "Don't touch it, don't even go near it." 

-Despite my expectations, there are heterosexual men here, though, half of the guys that I think are gay, because they are wearing tight pants, pointy shoes, and short jackets, are just European. 

-Women carry handbags, even if they also wear a backpack. You have to check backpacks at the museums so a small purse is useful. Wish I had thought of this when I was packing because carrying my wallet in my hand at the museums is getting old.

-New York is walkable, but after fifteen miles, my feet hurt. I bought a new pair of shoes-- unattractive, but my toes can wiggle in them. 

-People are from everywhere, I keep hearing languages from the world over, but if pressed, everyone speaks a little English.

-Old people and little kids walk faster than I do, or maybe it's that my feet hurt.

-There is no place like home, hotel beds are lumpy.

-New Yorkers call their mothers. I've heard many variations of "Mom" today, kind of sweet.

-I like the museums, the shopping is fine, and the restaurants are plentiful, but the city exhausts me. Then I went to Evensong at Saint Thomas Church (5th Aveue, NYC). The acoustics are amazing, the singing is beautiful, and I felt restored.

Two Bowls of Ramen

Deprivation, nearly two years, makes one do things like eat two bowls of ramen in one day. 

Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop is very good, though the location, Gotham West Market (600 11th Ave., NYC), feels a tad slick. My husband referred to the place as being "too Chipotle-fied." However, we did meet Ivan Orkin at the not yet open (May 9) second location (25 Clinton Street, NYC). He kindly chatted with us and said to come back. (They signed a ten year lease.) The Clinton location looks to be more of a neighborhood restaurant, and based on his awesome broth at the Slurp Shop, I'll be back.

Meeting Ivan Ramen, 25 Clinton Street, NYC

Because we ate early at the Slurp Shop, we decided to stop off at Totto Ramen and wait with the crowd. It's so much easier to wait when you're not hungry. The shop is small with the ambiance of Japan, minus the thumping music. Plus, I still wanted to get menma (bamboo shoots) and a soft boiled egg with my ramen.

After two bowls of ramen, our bellies sloshed back to the hotel.

I've seen a few produce stalls, but it seems woefully inadequate for a gastronomic city the size of New York. The search for produce led me to Chelsea Market which is full of bakeries and restaurants, but slim on produce.

My husband, ever more insightful and able to cook than I, reminded me of his college friend from New York City, who once said, "This is how you make fried rice in New York City!" The friend then picked up the phone. Apparently, not everyone cooks, the kitchens are small, but, there's plenty to eat on the streets and they deliver.

My husband is wondering if I've maxed out on ramen yet. Stay tuned, I've got a day or two left. 

Slurp Shop & Totto Ramen

Pastry Shopping

I stopped in for pan au chocolat, apple tart, and a croissant at Eclair (305 East 53 St., NYC 10022). I was the first customer by twenty seconds. The treats were delicious, and Athenians need not despair. Z Bakery's offerings, though only weekly, are on par. After the initial queue cleared out, I smiled as I listened to the owner give a French lesson to his front assistant. My French isn't so bad.

Me vs. We Thinkers

"Look at me, look at me, look at me." "Go out there and show them who's number one!" 

We Americans talk a lot. Talk. Talk. Talk. Many an American teacher sees the child (with a raised hand) that talks a lot as intelligent. This talk, talk, talk busy-ness is an American concept of intelligence often ridiculed in other cultures. Watch any Monty Python lately? You can verify it for yourself by watching many a newscaster.

In America, we hustle to get to the front of the line. We do not encourage our children to defer to others; this is seen as a sign of weakness. What is lost in deferring to those who think they need to be first? The result of this is that in America, time and energy are spent on me, me, me, which cultivates a certain amount of rudeness.

In Japan, children learn to wait to eat with other people so that everyone eats at the same time. Admittedly, this waiting drove me crazy with the preschool set, but by starting early, the tone is set for the "we" concept.

The me vs. we culture yields some tangible differences.

"Which culture is easier to get along with, Japanese or American?" my husband asked our son. With no hesitation, our son answered, "Japanese." I piped in, "Why?" Our son replied, "Because they're kinder, quieter, and they're not mean." 

Reeling at the sting of my own culture being meaner, I sat quietly, knowing that he spoke a truth. My husband brought up a difficult friend for our son while we lived in Japan. Our son responded, "The American kids are meaner." 

While Americans focus on, "I'm the boss," our Japanese friends focus on, "We are all part of the group." 

The focus on the we leads to some tedious experiences in trying to reach consensus. If everyone is part of the group, then any one member can lead the group astray as everyone has the right to challenge the group. You are not allowed to be mean to some because everyone has the right to be there.

Wow! Everyone has the right to be there. 

Japanese friends might say the niceness is feigned. My point is that the individual is important enough to the group that they fake being nice which beats vitriol anytime, just ask my nine year old.

In America we spend time dismissing everyone else's right to be at the table-- he's an athlete, they're gay, she's poor, he's uneducated. We're so busy eliminating differences that we end up serving only ourselves-- me, me, me.

We could benefit from thinking not about the me but about the we.

The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu) & Miyazaki Plans Exit

The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu), an epic film that sweeps through earthquake, fire, and dreams, is seen through the thick round bespectacled airplane designer, Jiro Horikoshi. His singleminded devotion to airplanes and love of flying machines dominates his life and dreams against the historical backdrop of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, an economic depression, a tuberculous epidemic, and war in Japan. 

Jiro's story is fueled by dreams, sponge cake, and cigarettes. His dreams are shared with an Italian airplane designer, Caproni (voiced by Stanley Tucci), who notes that though the work is designing airplanes, they are used for war and destruction, but he chooses to stay focused on the beauty of the machines, "Airplanes are not for war or making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams waiting to be swallowed by the sky." Jiro's curmudgeon boss, Kurokawa, (voiced by Martin Short) attempts to counter Jiro's dreaminess. Leaving a meeting with the military brass, Kurokawa says to Jiro, "You weren't even listening!" Jiro's focus is on creating and his response is classic Clint Eastwood, "Nope." 

Work dominates Jiro's life, and yet he is one to pause momentarily for music, to help others, to read poetry, and to take in the beauty of the Japanese countryside. He is not paralyzed by the pain of life or by the knowledge that his flying machines are wanted by the military. Instead he remains steadfast in his efforts to create something original and, to him, beautiful.  In a nod to the economic depression and his military minded customer he knows that he'll need ingenuity to overcome the lack of resources at his disposal from flush rivets to leaving off the guns. My eight year old history buff noted that Jiro's final aircraft was the Zero combat plane used in World War II.

A French poem, "The Graveyard by the Sea" ("Le Cimetière marin") by Paul Valery "The wind is rising!…We must try to live!" ("Le vent se lève!... Il faut tenter de vivre!"), gives the film its title and is at the core the way Jiro deals with obstacles in war, life, and love, it is about living, not regret.

Small doses of humor pepper the story through other characters such as when the Germans complain, "You Japanese copy everything!" Jiro's friend, Honjo (voiced by John Krasinski) quips, "What? Are you afraid we'll improve it?" Still the heart of this Jiro's story is about creating. In a dream sequence Caproni says "Artist are only created for ten years." At the end Caproni returns in another dream to ask him, "Ten years in the sun, did you live them well?"

Jiro's love, Nahoko Satomi (voiced by Emily Blunt) continues the theme of focusing on beauty and the moments at hand instead of the of what they cannot control or have due to the tuberculosis shortening her days. The most poignant scene is voiced by the landlady who stops Jiro's sister from going after Nahoka when she is seen walking away. The landlady (voiced by Jennifer Grey) understands that Nahoka wants Jiro to remember her as she was.

The animation is rich and detailed, the film long. The story's themes are complex and not for children, but for those who can understand the call of beauty and creating art and that the outcome of such work, though it can be used destructively, is born from an inner vision and drive that is without guile. Longing and loss play heavily in the second half of the film. Perhaps writer, director, and animator, Hayao Miyazaki wants us to remember him in a certain way while he still has the energy and will to direct his creativity. The Wind Rises seems a fitting capstone to his career.

"Ten years in the sun, did you live them well?" is a worthy question to ask ourselves.

Gaijin Tips for Eating Ramen

As a kid I carefully calibrated the ratio of water to flavor packet contents for just the right amount of salty broth to eat with packages of dried ramen noodles. Eventually I worked up to the styrofoam cups of soups that contained dehydrated vegetables and, my favorite, the bits of egg. Elevating ramen to the finest of foods seemed unimaginable back then, but in soup and noodle cultures the world over it has been and is being done. However, it has taken a while to land on the shores of America, and it might be awhile before it takes root in the hinterlands.

In Seattle I became acquainted with the Vietnamese version of beef broth and rice noodles known as pho. Seven years of pho eating in Washington, D.C., where there are a surprising number of pho restaurants, honed my family's passion for soup and noodles. Our son slurped his first rice noodles from a bowl of pho when he was six months old.

Our Japan hometown, Kamakura, is a tourist destination with lots of noodle options-- thick white udon noodles, dark and light buckwheat soba noodles, chewy curling yellow ramen noodles, and still more kinds like somen.  For five glorious years we ate noodles to our hearts' content. On weekends my family lined up at Miyoshi, a clean well-lit udon shop, for its smoky tori-jiro chicken stock and made as you watched udon noodles with a side of tempura. Our favorite soba was at Nakamura-an with its darker, country style, buckwheat noodles. However, we found the ramen master in Yokosuka, right outside the back gate of the Navy base.

First, we had to figure out how to buy a ticket for what we wanted. Ramen shops are small and often use a ticket machine instead of a cash register. Money is inserted, buttons are pushed, and a ticket is printed with the selected order to set before the chef. Though we were illiterate in Japanese, we were quick studies. Hit or miss, I ate what my ticket bought or traded it with my more adventurous husband.

While diners waited, the silent ramen master prepared each bowl with the choreographed moves of a dancer— shaking baskets of noodles, scooping sauces, and laying roast pork over clear broth with yellow noodles aesthetically arranged with a twirl of the chopsticks amidst the sounds of slurping diners, the ping of timers, and the simmering pots with thermometers nearby. Each bowl was garnished with green mizuna leaves, sheets of crisp black nori, and two red goji berries. These five colors of washoku Japanese home cooking-- black, white, yellow, green, and red-- made for a visually appealing bowl of hot steaming ramen that was also amazing to eat. Sadly, the shop moved.

Later a ramen shop opened in Kamakura that made a double soup, two stocks such as fish and chicken, combined just before serving. As far as I know, it's still there by the Tokyu. I went mostly during the day, eating beside delivery truck drivers, business men, and the occasional woman. 

Then my husband retired from the military and our days in Japan ended. 

Our new hometown is a college town, and probably like many university campuses has an influx of Asian students, mainly from China. They are not the passionate foodies I witnessed in Japan sniffing out the out of the way places, willing to wait hours for good food, and snapping photos of every meal. Instead, I see tables littered with partially eaten food and soup bowls coated with grease. You have to ask for the Chinese Chinese menu to even get a noodle bowl, but then they cater to these indiscriminate eaters. Though craving ramen, how to make it has eluded me. Until I spend the time refining my recipes for noodles, soup stocks, and making the components, I'll keep wishing that someone else will do it for me.


Gaijin tips for eating ramen:

• Don't talk, Eat!
• Eat it hot!
• Eat it quick, it’s supposed to be hot
• Slurp! Suck in cool air along with a mouthful of hot noodles and fat
• Don’t mind the noise, eat the food
• Don't talk, Eat!
• Ramen is not gluten free
• Dribbles on your chin are to be expected
• Drink all of the broth
• Noodles should be chewy, springy
• Ramen is everyone's food, rich or poor, man or woman
• If you're desperate for ramen, you can make your own

This is a clip from the udon shop, Miyoshi, in Kamkura-- we are eating zaru udon or cold udon. I never thought to take a photo of hot ready to slurp ramen.

Eating zaru udon at Miyoshi

Ivan Ramen

One morning I heard my husband, the late riser, laughing in bed. He had happened upon a funny video that combined a harsh Long Island Jewish guy with a double shio ramen from Japan. I posted the video to my Facebook page, and a Japanese friend asked, "Is it true story of this guy?" Turns out, he is real. He's a chef, a Japanophile, he has ramen shops in Japan and New York, and he has a new cookbook! The mystery of ramen is revealed in Ivan Ramen a new memoir and cookbook by Ivan Orkin.

This is not about styrofoam cups of instant ramen or dry bricks with the "flavor packet" one finds at the grocery store. This kind of ramen is about layers of flavor, hours of labor, and the magical experience of slurping (and you must slurp in air and thus make noise in order to eat) the hot broth and noodles. His ramen is a double shio salt ramen made with two kinds of stock which is my absolute favorite!

Five years of eating ramen noodles in Japan puts my authenticity button into the ozone. I'm a noodle snob. This book is the closest I've come to comprehending the scoops, techniques, and composition that go into making a bowl of ramen like those found in Japan. It's a rare book that captures what it is to eat ramen. It explains in fascinating detail the evolution, the who's who, and how to not only prepare, but eat ramen-- you must slurp the hot and the fat from a bowl of ramen into your mouth, and yes, it may dribble on your chin. 

Recipes for each component of the ramen he serves are included: chicken fat, pork fat, shio tare salt seasoning, sofrito aromatic vegetable base, katsuobushi seasoned salt, double soup stock, toasted rye noodles, menma cured bamboo shoots, chashu braised pork belly, and the beloved in Japan half-cooked egg. His story about how he got to this point in life, in the kitchen, and in the dual locations of New York and Japan are shared in a warm open hearted way that contrast with his sharp city demeanor on display in the video.

Ivan Orkin is a Culinary Institute of America in New York graduate and chef who brings careful attention to a food he loves. His ramen is prepared with the exacting standards he utilized in kitchens like Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill and the famous French restaurant Lutèce in Manhattan. He explains how to make ramen at home, but you will need great ingredients, lots of time, a weight scale, and a thermometer.

I could kiss his toes for writing this book and giving me the hope that someday I can create a bowl of ramen worthy of the ones I ate in Japan, but in my own kitchen here in the hills of Ohio.

Let the noodling begin!

Ivan Ramen

Art, Film, & Diet

In the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, apes go from picking bugs off of each other and pulling at weeds to playing with bones and meat eating. With the appearance of a black monolith and the eery alignment of the moon, earth, and sun, evolution shifts. The story moves to twirling spacecraft dancing to waltz music from the moon to a computer controlled mission to Jupiter. The men are better looking and the tool is now a HAL 9000 computer with feelings. The film started the career trajectory of the then seventeen year old John Gurche, a paleo-artist and speaker at the Science on Screen program at the Athena Cinema last night.

John Gurche got my attention with an image of brains— white brains models on white paper (image not available)-- as they evolved one after the other and grew in size dramatically. His comment about what got the humanoid brains doubling is diet related. Look at the big brains on homo sapien and thank protein and fat.

His intriguing perspective on 2001: Considering how far we've come, what will the next step in evolution look like?

John Gurche’s work has appeared on magazine covers for National Geographic, Discover, and Natural History. His work can be seen at the Smithsonian, the Field Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History as well as others. His work has appeared in the film Jurassic Park. His new book is Shaping Humanity: How Science, Art, and Imagination Help Us Understand Our Origins.

The Bread Diet & a Bun Recipe

I chuckled over a Facebook post about the number of loaves of bread to buy for a snow storm partly because though I think of going out for milk, toilet paper, and salt, I don’t think about buying bread. We make it at home because finding a decent loaf of bread in the States is difficult. The transition of where foods are prepared, from home to industrial food processors, means that the way food is valued, made, stored, and shipped has also changed.

Bread is about shelf life, not taste, in the States.

Despite having been the staff of life for thousands of years, bread's reputation has lost its luster in part due to the rise of gluten intolerance. Please note that the industrialization of bread baking with its reduced fermentation times has been noted to play a part in the increased prevalence of gluten intolerance. It’s therefore not merely the fault of gluten but also the quick fermentation and industrial processing that need to be avoided.


Last Thanksgiving while slicing up cheap white sandwich bread for stuffing, my husband noticed an odor emitting from the loaves. After seven years of making our own bread or buying sandwich bread from a baker in Japan, it was a revelation to then handle processed bread. It stinks.

On a recent morning, coming down the stairs, I spied the step ladder in front of open pantry doors. Flour coated the kitchen counter and floor. A bowl of barely mixed dough was sitting in front of my beaming child. Despite my frustration with the mess, I help him cover the dough and clean up while sharing in his delight for having just created something.

This child often rises with the sun in a cheerful manner and sometimes begins unsupervised projects like making bread dough. I’m not sure exactly what posses him, but his bread concoctions are amazingly good. He uses all-purpose flour with a high protein content and instant yeast because that is what is accessible in the pantry. (The long acting yeast is in our fridge and he’s yet to use it.) I tend to let the dough sit around all day, sometimes overnight, and then shape it right before he comes home from school because of course he wants to see if it turned into something. We bake it and voilà, it’s always tasty, moist, and somedays it even has lovely holes, think of the no knead bread method. I’ve decided that part of his bread’s success lies in the long fermentation process and the beauty of playing with food.

In these parts of Ohio, the vegan (CHIP) diet is heavily pushed. However, there are still plenty of us around who eat a few animal products and like our bread to contain gluten. I eat plenty of vegetarian fare, but I have an intense dislike of faux food or food that is vegan but is supposed to taste like meat or something else. I prefer eating foods that are what they are, and processed whatever food is usually not so good for you anyway.

When I worked as a cardiac nurse, I asked patients and their families about their diet. Americans eat too much processed food. It’s one of the reasons I learned to cook real food. It’s also the reason I eat butter, bread, full fat yogurt, and drink whole milk— it’s real food. I’ve also noted that people the world over who eat and cook what they like in reasonable amounts and that exercise to some degree are not always on a (calories restricted) diet. For the love of food, eat the real stuff and get it locally. If I was  dishing out diet advice, I would say consider this from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” I might add that wheat is a plant.

Do you remember the National Geographic article about longevity and diet that highlighted the blue zones where people lived for a long time which included the Sardinians, Okinawans, and the Seventh-day Adventists of Loma Linda, California? They ate diets that included bread, cheese, meat, and small amounts of alcohol along with the vegan and vegetarian fare. A National Geographic researcher, Dan Buettner, commented on blue zone diets in a later interview, saying, “Hanging out with unhappy people who drink and smoke is hazardous to your health.” My point here is that bread and cheese can be part of a healthy diet (and it helps to socialize and be part of a community).

Recently, I've been reading Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the  Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World by Sue Shepard. I was shocked in the preface to read that in 1800 archaeologist in Egypt were eating honey thousands of years old until they found some hairs in it and then the perfectly preserved body of a small baby. Apparently honey keeps almost indefinitely and gives self-preserving new meaning.

The book is full of interesting bits on the competitive food chain— “if we don’t quickly take advantage of a food, something else will.” The history on the ways that this has been done is quite interesting. Think of travelers, refugees, soldiers, sailors, and long winters with no food and add to that the myriad locations around the world with varying conditions, food stuffs, and learning curves. The fermentation process and ingredients like vinegar, salt, honey, and sugar were found to transform perishable food stuff into storable and transportable foods like crackers, breads, cheeses, yogurts, and wines. It’s kind of interesting to realize that butter and yogurt weren’t about being healthy or unhealthy but about putting food by for another day.

Our industrious forebearers found that fermentation can make inedible foods edible. The Sudanese love of rotten meat evolved in a region plagued with food scarcity and benefits those that consume every last calorie available to them. Fermentation gives us cultural icons that are now eaten throughout the world— German saurkraut, Vietnamese fish sauce nuoc mam, katsuobushi and miso from Japan, thousand year old eggs from China, Korean kimchi, and even bread.  Allowing yeast to ferment is part of what makes gluten digestible.

If an eight year old boy can come downstairs and mix up a bowl of dough that turns into a delicious bread, so can you. Here's a recipe for buns that are delish. Put some jam on it. Live a little. Eat bread, but make it yourself.

Buns for Breakfast or Burgers

Make 8 to 12

These breakfast buns work with or without a burger. I adapted a recipe from the online The Bakers Circle hosted by King Arthur flour.

Ingredients

Whole Wheat flour, 2/3 cup

Bread flour 2 1/3 cup

Sugar, 1/4 cup

Salt, 1 1/4 tsp

Warm Water, 1 cup

Yeast (regular), 1 Tbsp

Egg, 1 large

Butter, 2 Tbsp melted & slightly cooled + 3 Tbsp for topping

Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, whisk together whole wheat flour, bread flour, sugar, and salt.
2. Melt 2 Tbsp of butter butter and set aside to cool slightly.
3. In another mixing bowl, whisk together 1 cup of the flour mix, warm water, and yeast until smooth and shiny, about 1 minute.
4. Add the egg and slightly cooled butter to the mixture and whisk again until smooth and shiny, about 1 minute.
5. In a standing mixer fitted with a dough hook or by hand, add the remaining flour mixture to the dough mix and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Add additional bread flour as needed if extremely sticky, should just be tacky.
6. Cover the dough, and allow to rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 to 2 hours.
7. Gently deflate the dough, divide into 8 to 12 pieces (8 for burger size; 12 for bun size, 24 for slider size). Shape each piece into a round ball; flatten to about 3-inches across. Place the buns on a silicon sheet or parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover and let rise until noticeably puffy, about 1 hour.
8. Brush buns with half of the additional melted butter. Bake 375ºF until golden, about 15 to 18 minutes, Remove from the oven and brush with the remaining melted butter.

5 Food Stories I Never Want to Hear Again!

1. Ten foods to Avoid
2. Gluten Free Baguettes
3. Fat Free Whipping Cream
4. Belly Fat Sparing Meat Substitue
5. Low Carb Anything

"Good for your skin," said my Japanese friend encouragingly as she dug into a bowl of motsu, a dish made of pork guts, offal. I stared in disbelief. With nearly every dish, the connection between food and body was established during my time in Japan with quips like, "Good for your liver!" Prescriptive eating suggestions abound in other cultures except in the States where the eater is more often encouraged to avoid foods. "No fat!" "No white foods!" "No gluten!" "10 Worst Foods Ever!" It's amazing there is anything left to eat here, but then it's just the one thing. The grapefruit diet! Cabbage soup! Kale! All or nothing.

Food choices matter whether in the form of waste created or demand for a limited resource. Think of over developed chicken breasts throwing chickens off balance or overfishing shark to feed the appetite for shark fin soup.

The environment is shaped by our food choices-- hog shit geysers spewing forth at factory farms, fertilizers laying waste the water supply in an effort to squeeze ever more yield from crops, genetically modified seeds that have to be purchased every time (no seed saving), grain feed and some extra protein (sometimes parts of the same animal) for animals that for thousands of years have eaten only grass, antibiotics indiscriminately added to animal feed. The list goes on.

Food choices reflect seasons, celebrations, necessity, hunger, and even presence-- because it's there. We also choose foods because they give us a sense of power and control or prestige or because they comfort us. So often the discussion of what ails us is about avoiding foods which also avoids the conversation about what we really need to control (stress, problems, work, kids, relationships, family, etc.).

In 2007 prior to departing for Japan, laying about in the heat of the Ohio summer in my in-law's guest room feeling rootless and uncertain about the impending move, I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. I laughed myself silly over her turkeys that could not fathom how to procreate. We have drifted so far from understanding food that even animals struggle with how to be animals without models for behavior.

I long to hear things framed positively like, "eat chocolate, it heals," or "risotto is good for stress." Instead, I'll settle for stories that encourage the consumption of the whole, real, and local food.

Buy

Assumptions, Shoes, & Options

I assume too much and fill in the blanks with wild guesses, blame it on my Navy brat upbringing where every two to three years cultural shifts were the norm and newcomers were always in the mix. Now, I live in a small town. I notice when the milk man works at the bakery because it confuses me-- I thought he delivered milk. The milk man baker also works at the farmers market for yet another vendor. 

Instead of imposing order on the universe, I ought to let the world just be, but shiny things distract me. Meanwhile, my husband dead pans a line from Bill Forsyth's film, Local Hero, "we tend to double up on jobs around here." 

Here, unassuming neighbors walk dogs and have stage roles, a dad at the after school pick up awaits his kids and hearing if his reality show will be picked up for cable TV, meanwhile a few moms are concocting local products in pursuit of regional sales as entrepreneurs. 

My imagination needs an update; my fill in the blanks are falling short. I read a lot of, I'd like to write books, but it's more a combination of posts, articles, poems, and a book or two a month. The point is I try to fuel my imagination. I read stories and tell myself it never happens like that! Except that, lately I've begun to think, it does and so much more! 

Here's an example of assumptions versus reality.

"It was about shoes," my friend shared. She's kind of earthy so I was befuddled as to what kind of shoes had riveted her attention. The conversation shifted and then came back around to her shoe story. Meanwhile, I envisioned a pair of glamorous shoes that you only wear walking about in Manhattan on Sex in the City. Her story wasn't really about shoes though.

"I was outside Kroger. This guy was taking off his shoes and he threw his shoes into the trash can. Then he put on a pair of boots. I was thinking about these shoes I wanted so I was pissed that someone had new shoes, but then I decided to go with it. I asked him, 'Did you get new shoes?' He was like.'Yeah!' and I was saying 'Yeah!' back to him. It turned into a genuine feeling of happiness for him." 

I did not discover the secret shoes of desire but damned if I didn't learn a brilliant lesson from her-- you have a choice in which thoughts you express AND you don't have to pick the first one that comes to you. 

That same night another friend had challenged us to a choice of "A or B?" I impulsively blurted out, "A" before I realized she was talking to the group, not just me. We went with "A" anyway. We were all then instructed to fake laughter for one full minute. 

Ten seconds into it, I was laughing so hard tears spilled out. A day or so later, my shoe friend pointed out it was all there from the beginning. We weren't faking it until we were making it as we had discussed in the moments after on that night. Instead, we chose to bring another experience to the surface. With minimal effort, the nobler thought easily overtook the surface distraction to become a genuine and positive experience. To choose laughter and get it, for real, felt weirdly awesome. 

The "B" option was to say, "Oh yeah!" I resisted this expression as it felt weirdly like "you go girl" which feels like a chant for encouraging someone to strip themselves of class or elegance. Nonetheless, I got there a few beats later in an euphoric rush by choosing to say it, saying it, and, finally, meaning it. 

The power of words is that they reveal truths even if it takes a minute-- they might be buried below anger or frustration-- but the good is there with the bad and the ugly. We choose our paths when we choose our words. 

Try 2 timing your thoughts

Serving a Grinch

Strain was palpable on the bartender's face as the restaurant hummed with customers. With only a brief glance at me, he took my order, retreated down the bar, attended to other matters, and then hurriedly placed my drink before me, failing to meet my eyes for more than a nanosecond. Instead, his eyes drifted to the vacant space above the next task. The elements of service were there but it lacked the warmth of my time under the lights. Lest you think I'm an attention hog, let me offer another perspective.

In Japan, lines are long and yet the customer's experience rarely waivers once it's your turn. The bartender stays with the customer until the drink is delivered, no interruptions. The ritual is honored as the drink is painstakingly measured, unhurriedly mixed, and then set before you with fanfare that varies with the bartender's skills of understatement (only in Japan). 

In any financial transaction in Japan, whether at a kiosk or a bank, money is meticulously counted out twice no matter how many others await their turn. First, cashiers counts the money to themselves while you watch, and then the money is again counted as it is given to the customer. Only the bank does this consistently in the States (so far). Recently when I counted out a wad of cash a grocery store cashier handed over to me, the cashier quipped, "We go on trust here!" I continued to count it and quipped back, "Not where I'm from." He probably missed by point.

Trusting that a foot will fall on something solid when stepping into the void is the kind of trust I think the world needs. When every customer's experience is consistent, whether from the bartender to the grocery store cashier, then the experience is about good service not whether I trust a stranger to make my drink or count my change. Even when you know the service provider it is a professionalism and self-respect for the work that is added to the transaction when the service is provided in a consistent and reverential way. 

Respect the work that you do by taking it seriously in the moment. 

Make me a drink; stay with me. Give me my change; count out my damn money. Act like you respect the work you do; expect me to watch you. Do your work; don't ask me fifty questions on how to do it-- that's why I'm paying you to provide the service. Trust that I will wait for the experience; deliver it. Ignore the chatty co-worker while you are engaged in a customer interaction; stay in the moment.

You have to choose to serve calmness.

Serving Calm, drinking a Grinch

Bush & Porn

This may be offensive for some-- it is meant to be thought provoking & I'm still working on my technique.


A few years ago I was sitting in a Starbucks in Japan with fellow Americans when the conversation turned to pubic hair. Stop here if the words pubic hair bother you. 

The American women were offended by the presence of pubic hair on a women's body. To cover my shock, I coughed into my latte. I wondered, What exactly is the American norm? 

In Japan there is an entire bathing culture built around taking an onsen bath. The sexes are divided. Women with bodies at various stages of development and aging, ranging from young children to the kyphotic elderly, bathe together at the onsen. With little more than a hand towel you enter into the washing area and sit on a small stool facing a spigot or hand shower to wash both your body and then leaning forward (not backward as in a shower) you wash your hair. There is a fair amount of scrubbing and washing before a final rinse with the bucket. Hair is tied up and out of the way. Some wear the small hand towel on their head though most drape it in front of the body as a nod toward modesty. The hot water beckons as you make your way toward a pool with clouds of steam floating over it. Somehow the onsen wears you out and restores you at the same time. A cold splash of water or a dose of fresh air chills the body so it can return to the heat again and again. Like a fire in a dark cave, it is an elemental activity. 

North American culture offers little by way of experience with nudity beyond the movies or perhaps at the gym which with shower curtains and dressing stalls, it is more about avoiding nudity. I love the way of modesty and ease in the Japanese onsen. I had thought little, if at all, about pubic hair. Apparently, I missed the conversation where grown sexually mature women were not supposed to have pubic hair because the American ladies were talking about the bushes the Japanese women sported, meanwhile, most Japanese women have less body hair from their eye lashes to their legs than Caucasian women. While my fellow Americans commented on various hair removal options, I made a mental note to never go to the onsen with the coffee klatch.

At a recent holiday party, I found myself in conversation with a gentleman who studies media and pornography. He pointed out that the porn industry has shifted into more mainstream culture since the sixties and that there is a gentrifying within the industry itself-- films are less shocking. When I asked about the pubic shaving trend, he noted that the porn industry needs shaved genitals-- without pubic hair the penis appears larger and the vagina can be better visualized. As these industry requirements have found their way into mainstream, its acceptance has been especially popular with those under thirty. 

My conflict is not with the individual's choice to practice pubic hair or no pubic hair removal, but that women are adapting to norms for the porn industry and then judging others without so much as a discussion or concession to the meaning behind the practice. 

Consider that female nudity is defined by an infantilizing sex industry and then women use scorn and disapproval to legitimize it. Does it matter that the practice of removing pubic hair came from the porn industry? While we're busy fiddling, I fear Rome burns. 

A newer trend-- the surgical removal of dangling labia minora looms. Dangling is relative to the beholder, but it should be noted that without pubic hair there is certainly less cushioning to protect any protrusion. Also dangling is within the realm of normal except in the porn industry. My brain skipped straight to the idea of female circumcision (not the same thing) and to the concern that young women are choosing to alter their sex organs and thus the actual experience of sex for an image.

Why would anyone want mature sex organs to mimic a child's? What conversation aren't we having? Should the porn industry be the standard barer of nudity? Is personal practice above reproach in lift of the willingness to condemn others who choose not to follow trends?

Once a practice takes root, it takes on its own path. However, sometimes we find ourselves on a journey we never meant to start that drains us of energy for the one on which we really want to be. Pubic shaving versus bush takes on cultural connotations from the experiences around the practice. If we shave and condemn, do we enhance our own sexual experiences or do we put ourselves falsely above others as we adopt standards from an industry which objectifies women?

Fair food is a kind of thrill food, taking on new connotations from the experience around it

Staying Home Your Way

Recently, a mother said she thought it would be better if her husband stayed home instead of her. In Japan, this is an exceedingly rare occurrence from what I have noticed. When asked why, she said, "He's a better cook," and "He cares more about the house," etc. Mmm, I nodded. My husband too is a much better cook and tends to like the house cleaner than I do.

For now, he works at his never ending job, and I work at my never ending job.

Primo Caretaker, like any job, has some facets for which I wasn't quite prepared, mainly, the never ending need for cooking and cleaning. For on the job training and parental inspiration, I first turned to books. I searched for ideas on what in the world I was supposed to be doing with babes in arms- sleep books mostly since I never got enough. I took a few baby and me classes- kids and music kind of stuff. I got some new ideas; I met other parents. Later, I read about bilingual kids before moving to Japan and launching my children into yochien Japanese preschool. I enrolled in monthly cooking class after realizing that I was going to have to cook regularly- that it took a few years to start one demonstrates my resistance level. I still tell myself that it's not about better but different.

The never endingness of jobs (whatever they may be) is the real struggle. I enjoy shiny things and new ideas. Life with kiddos has a lot of routine. I like some routines- when it's warm tea, clean sheets, jobs done. 

I also see that my kids are so themselves. I may influence them, but they are on their own path. For now we share a dusty house, eat too many of the same dishes again and again, but it is here we get to be. Childhood is such a short time; it won't be long that you'll be in this role.

All these kid years later I see that we just do it differently. There is no right way for us beyond the way that it is.

Embrace your different, just do it.